Trees and neighbours

[absolutmum]

My elderly mother received a letter from the neighbours last week politely requesting that she cuts down 4 substantial trees in her garden. This is an ongoing saga which rears its ugly head every 3/4 years.
The trees are all quite substantial conifers and can drop a lot of debris and this is what the neighbour objects to. One is in the front garden and he thinks it is causing a crack in the wall of his music room (converted garage!). The garage was an addition to his house many years ago, before he bought the house, and probably shouldn't have been built so close to a tree. The back garden trees drop bits onto his patio and he is fed up with sweeping them up.
We are taking all correspondance to a solicitor to get an official letter writeen to him to attempt to stop this forever, any tips on what we should say, other than the neighbour has made no attempt to trim the overhanging branches and my mother has had the tress regularly trimmed and pruned?
As you can imagine this has caused enormour worry for an 80 year old.

Legally, he is allowed to cut back the overhang but if the roots are damaging his property then this isn't the major problem. Conifers grow very quickly, hence why there's a bit of law about them (Tall Trees Act). She needs to get a tree surgeon out.

Often, more damage is done to buildings as a result of mature trees being removed than if they were left in place, as the ground conditions are changed suddenly with much more moisture remaining in the soil where previously the tree was sucking it up. The ground swells as a result and foundations are damaged.

Conversely, the ground beneath mature trees is usually in equilibrium and it is unlikely to be the tree causing the cracking. As already suggested, a good tree surgeon will be able to advise. Check they are registered with the Arboricultural Association though and not just someone who wants to make a quick buck out of chopping them down unnecessarily.

If the roots are damaging his garage, this problem won't ever go away. Why not cut the trees down?

Why won't she agree to the trees' removal, esp. if they're very tall conifers? They'll be shading her garden and sucking the moisture out of the soil, I'd have thought.

Is there a compromise where your mother can reduce the height of the trees but not remove them.

I have some sympathy for the neighbour because conifers are such a nuisance tree. Our next door neighour has conifers bordering our property and it blocks all of the light to the garden from 12 noon onwards and the mess generated by the needles is incredible. We have to sweep every day just to keep our back porch clear.

Obviously your mother should be allowed to grow what she likes in her garden but she needs to be vigilant to stop the trees preventing your neighbours right to enjoy his garden too.

Do your mother's insurers know she has such large trees so close to her neighbour's property?

I have just had a large conifer removed from the bottom of our garden. The thing was a lovely tree and about 50 years old and had never been topped so was higher than our house and those around it.
It was a shame that it had to go but it was sucking all the moisture out the soil and nothing could grow around it. The roots were so large you could see where they had lifted the soil around it.
The tree surgeon said at the time that these trees are not really suitable for gardens due to the size they can grow to if they are not kept in check by people who know what they are doing and in his experience most people dont. They buy them and put them in because some 16 year old working saturdays in their local garden centre tell them they are a dwarf conifer and they dont know just how big a dwarf is in terms of conifer trees.

We had over 30 taken out of our garden a few years ago and it made a massive difference. We had a 60 foot silver birch which we didn't even know was there, also a Cedar of Lebanon, completely hemmed in by bloody Leylandii, which again we had no idea was there.

Our next door neighbour has grown these trees right next to our boundary fence.Our crazy paving has ldeveloped large cracks near where the trees are growning and we too have to clear up pin needles that drop on our side. so I don't really have much sympathy for the op I'm afraid

Suggest you post on Garden Law Forum, very helpful people which deal with tree issues!